


Lost to be Found

by twowritehands



Series: Our Souls Define Us [1]
Category: Battle Creek (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Series, Soulbond AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-09 23:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13492059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: The bloody outcome of Milt facing his past forces Russ to face their future. Maybe soulbonding isn't a fate worse than death…. Post-series. Soulbond AU.





	Lost to be Found

**Author's Note:**

> If we have enough time and energy, my sis and I might go back and write a longer version of this, or maybe a similar soulbond story, possibly even going episode by episode since there aren't that many?
> 
> And it probably WONT be first person POV because I don't even know why this one is? lol

Okay, so a lot of people go their whole lives without managing to open a conduit with another person. All that soul sharing, telepathy crap could _and should_ be classified as a mental illness. Who the hell wants to have someone else under their skin? Not me. Maybe I used to, as a dumb kid, but I grew up. As lead Detective in BCPD my job has shown me up close the dark side of what having a soulbond can do to you if you aren't ready for it.

I sure wasn't fucking ready.

Then Milt happened.

What an asshole. _He_ opened the conduit between us. _He_ took over everything. _He_ made me want things I knew better than to want.

Everyday he came in with his perfect hair and pristine suit and we went to work while he handed me glimpse after glimpse of himself. His humor. His desires. His interests.

I mostly ignored his conduit gifts. I bitched about him to anyone who would listen. He was such a phony. A big fat liar. He called me “babe” in front of everyone all the goddamn time because he was a love struck imbecile obsessed with forming a bond of codependency and distraction. That, or he was just the devil.

Sometimes when I drank too much, I'd forget to shut him out and I’d lay with him whispering to me over the conduit. It felt like someone holding me close and combing fingers through my hair even though I was alone in my bed. I'd fall asleep as he, from all the way across town, handed me sweet nothings….

And then he handed his gun to some nut and let him pull the trigger.

A hot tear rolled down my face, and I dashed it away fast before the nurse or anybody saw. I stood beside his hospital bed, watching him sleep. 50-50 chance he’d wake up, they said.

Jesus.

I pressed on my eyes and heaved a breath that hurt. That was the bruised ribs from the beating Milt’s shooter had given me, probably. I mean, there was perfectly good oxygen in here that other people breathed just fine. Milt being like this, it wasn't sucking all the air out of the room or anything.

 _Fuck_.

I sat in the chair. Grabbed his hand. Skin to skin contact anchored me. He was warm, which was comforting. He didn't look very warm laid out so orderly like a coffin with sheets. A tube drained out of his chest cavity. Between the heart rate monitors and the IV cords and the oxygen tube and the catheter, he looked like he was only superficially alive. At least he was breathing on his own now. I had hated that ventilator machine that had inflated his chest for him.

“Open your eyes, goddammit.”

He didn't stir. The machines beeped. I gasped for breath again and got myself under control. Because, no. Not like this. I didn't slice open my soul and patch it with his just to…

I chuckled bitterly. “Hey, Milt. Remember when you first Reached me? Huh?”

No response of course. I sniffed and sank back into the memory, which was--suddenly, weirdly-- _fond_.

“I was…” I laughed, a short choppy sound. I had been masturbating. Really going at it, and suddenly, “You showed up in my head like a literal goddamn wet dream. Floating there on your board on the ocean, dripping and sun warmed and beautiful….” Breathing hurt again. I had to stop and just work my lungs for a minute.

When I started back, my voice was rough. “I knew what it was? but I didn't know either. I denied it. I just believed so hard already that I was Unreachable. You couldn't be real. This fucking Malibu Ken doll.”

Laughing felt weirdly good. Pressure relief. Breathing got a little easier and I filled my lungs to the very bottom. But Milt’s silence in the conversation crushed me pretty fast again.

I wanted the son of a bitch to crack open one of those perfect eyelashed eyes, dimple at me, and say something totally lame and considerate like, _you shouldn't be sitting in that uncomfortable chair all night for me. Go home and rest, babe._

Fucking idiot.

I squeezed his hand. “I didn't consider any of it too closely. I just let it be. Half convinced it was just a ludicrous fantasy of longing I cooked up on my own. Half secretly so happy it finally happened…”

God, I could remember that first vision like it was yesterday. It's what I imagine pure cut cocaine to the blood does to you. I wanted him like nothing in my whole life. But because I'm not a fucking idiot, and I'm a cop, I said no to drugs.

I mean, I did _everything_ I possibly could to resist. But it’s not that easy when your actual soulmate has a bead on you and some kind of freakishly focused mindset. Reaching is hard, and reaching across the United States is even harder but not for wonder boy here.

Took him five years, maybe about a hundred Visions, to analyze me enough to get a name, a location. Of course, once he had that, with his fancy high tech FBI resources he got a phone number.

I didn't want him actually _in_ my life. Not for real. I was comfortable with the Fantasy thing. Long distance pining is like a sweet spot of mine.

“I thought we had it made in the beginning, life was perfect the way it was. Then you called me out of the blue. You stopped being a silent highlight real and became this voice. Your fucking voice. On the phone. Using a number I expressly did _not_ give you. Like a total creep, which I loved because it let me hate you.”

A rush went through me with a confession like that. Maybe it was a floodgate opening. “You're an asshole, Milton, you just have everything I need _all the time_ and telling me your Big Secret was supposed to make you less perfect, but it just made me see how we belong together for real and f-forever--and, I--i need you to wake up, okay, sweetheart. Just. I need you here now.”

I pressed his hand to my wet lips and watched his face closely.

Nothing.

More tears rolled down my face so I buried my eyes in the bed. What kind of sick joke was this anyway? What was the point of a soulbond if a coma cut it off? His brain waves were normal. Shouldn't that mean the bond would be normal? Emotion swaps, thought exchanges, dream sharing, all of it.

I sat up, fell back in the chair. My mind raced with a new theory. The right theory. I was onto something. I had the answer. Case solved.

This whole time, Milt Reached to me. The conduit flowed one way, him into me. Now I needed to Reach to him.

My lungs worked again, and my chest heaved a bunch of times. It was humbling to finally See just how much work my partner had been putting into our relationship. Way more than I realized.

I've been a total _dick_.

Maybe he let the guy pull the trigger because he was just tired. Tired of running from his demons and tired of scratching at a wall that never fully came down for him. I was supposed to be a sanctuary, but I left him out in the cold. He handed a crazed man that gun because he probably thought it was the best option for actual peace.

Shaky breath, I whispered,

“Hold on, baby. Don't go anywhere. I figured it out. Stay. I’m. Let me in and I’ll get you out.”

I closed my eyes. I reached out for the first time since I was maybe twenty. And only the second time in my life. The first had been a vastly disturbing experience. My tender virgin soul out in the cosmos, quivering, alone...and ignored. No one reached back to me.

So I just never did it again. Always said if my soulmate wanted me bad enough they'd Reach me even without me regularly letting it all hang out.

And he fucking _did_ and it took his suicide by grief stricken madman for me to see through my own bullshit. I was a coward. But that stopped now.

My Malibu Milt needed me.

It was a different feeling when I reached this time. I didn't feel so small anymore. Before I was like a vapor. Now I have body weight; I expanded beyond my skin like a gelatinous blob. And no that isn't sexy but it's _me_.

I oozed over Milt, settled over him like a blanket. I felt every firm plane of his muscular, corporal body, and every shimmering pulse of his sleeping spirit.

_Milt._

He was wide open. Received me like I was coming home from war even though _he_ was the one with the gunshot wound. We merged, it felt like salt water rushing over sand and getting in-between all the billions of little granules.

Slipping into Milt’s skin was almost like sticking my head in a library. Quiet. Orderly. This oppressing aura of politeness and knowledge. I felt absurdly like a tardy student.

 _Russ._ That was Milt’s voice in my mind. I felt it like a feather stirring in a light breeze. _Where am I?_

 _You're sleeping, sweetheart, but it's time to wake up_.

 _Why? Wait, what happened--_? He opened his eyes with a soft gasp like a man who forgot to set an alarm last night. I had a pretty good feeling that he’d just remembered the gunshot.

I was so relieved to see his eyes again, I collapsed gently onto the side of his bed, burying my face in the blankets on his belly. Tears stung my eyes, and I drew a real breath for the first time since that gunshot rang across that field.

My emotions zinged away from me down the wide open conduit between us. As they went, I felt tingles and buzzes coming. I realized upon closer inspection that these were emotions from Milt, and all I had to do was turn them over and I recognized them. Confusion. Fear. Relief. Affection. Love.

Lifting my head, I met my mate’s dark eyes. He flashed me those pearly whites.

 _Thanks for letting me in,_ Milt said without speaking. With this telepathic exchange came empathic gifts. Gratitude and a startling, resounding love. Love for me that's been sitting in him the way a mountain sits on a continent. Unbudging and ever growing.

I went breathless again, but in a much better way than before. Milt entered my blood and bones and mind and soul. I felt him leafing through me like a file, but he was gentle. _I'm so honored to form this bond with you, Russel._

 _Oh god, don't be polite at a time like this,_ I shot back with a load of annoyance but also fondness. I couldn't help it. Couldn't hide it. It occured to me that I should have answered his Reaches a long time ago simply for the expressed purpose of succinctly conveying to him how infuriating he often was. Still is.

Case in point: Milt smiled at me from his hospital bed. Like he was some kind of hero rather than a moron who might as well have put the bullet in his chest himself.

 _How could you_? I asked, feeling a hot wave of my outrage.

A sharp pang of grief and guilt and self hatred swamped me. It was all from Milt, who frowned.

_Brock wanted me dead, and for a good reason. And what did I have to fight for? I had to assume your continued resistance meant you truly didn't want me._

“I fucking wanted you,” I said out loud because this telepathic stuff took too much effort. “You were winning me over, didn't you know that? A little more each day. But then--” I huffed and more hot tears fell. “You just gave up right in front of me. You goddamn _bastard_.”

Milt was crying now. “No. No, baby, I gave up on _me_. Not you!”

“You. Can't. Do. That. Again.”

 _“_ Never _.” I'll get help, I swear to God. I'll get professionals to teach me how to get right with myself. I'll take care of me, for you. I love you so much, baby. I'll do anything--_

“Stop,” I gasped. His onslaught was overwhelming and it left me feeling dizzy.

“Would you prefer to keep your own cognitive space?” Milt asked out loud. His voice was soft, husky from lack of use.

I gave him a cup of water and helped him sip from it. He licked the water from his lips and his voice was still strained but stronger. “If you're more comfortable with a closed conduit coupling then I'll maintain those boundaries. I'll do anything to have you, Russ. To _really_ _have_ you “

 _Shut up, you idiot._ I kissed Milt’s hand.

A curl of desire touched me like on cartoons when the aroma of a pie gets a dog’s attention.

I laughed, and I didn't know where the sound came from exactly. Him or me? Impossible to tell. Our defining edges were already fading. It's cliche as fuck but sitting there I couldn't tell where I stopped and he began.

And we hadn't even properly fucked yet.

Christ, maybe this closed conduit idea was something to really consider. I seriously doubted I could perform sexually with perfect Milt invading the cockpit like a creepy as fuck puppeteer to my marionette.

After a couple of breaths and a little thinking on it, I pushed this feeling toward Milt.

I watched his eyes go hooded, his lips peel apart, his breathing change as he accepted the empathic gift and examined it. One corner of his mouth twitched. He grunted a positive sound.

I scratched at a scab in my eyebrow. “We have plenty of time before you're all better to develop a conduit we’re both comfortable with before….”

Milt nodded, looking relieved which he buzzed over to me silently. I scraped my bottom lip and nodded to acknowledge the gift.

Needed Recovery Time was a good thing for us. We were both nervous to cross that threshold, because when we did, things would change. People were going to look at us--especially me, the guy they've known forever--very differently. I wrote about my interest in men a little in high school, but I never talked about it to anyone.

I've had encounters before, mostly in bars out of town; weekends of exploration and regret. Some people close to me might have guessed. I never said anything out loud.

Of course, Milt showing up and openly claiming to be my soulmate paved the way for us. It was a hilarious joke to them at first, but then they each turned a corner and started pushing me to do the same. They just wanted me to be happy and believed Milt would do it based solely on the allegations that we were soulmates.

I insisted the opposite and now had to admit I was wrong.

“You don't have to stay here all night. Go home and get some rest.”

I rolled my eyes. “Knew you'd say that.”

“Because I care for you.”

“Because it's just the right thing to say. You don't want to be alone here.”

His little frown proved me right. I brushed his hair out of place just because I could, and I liked to see it in his eyes. “I'm staying. Deal with it.”

He gulped harder than I was expecting, and his chest hitched. His statement was clipped, “'Love you, Russ.”

Out loud and everything. My heart skipped a beat.

I licked dry lips. Gave him the old Agnew lopsided grin. “Love you too, Milt. Now shut up.”

Maybe we could keep PDA strictly in the conduit.

Milt interpreted the tingles of this shy little gift and winked. I had to change the subject.

We found the little bed remote and buzzed for a nurse. They came in and made sure he was as okay as he looked now that he was awake. They upped his dosage to make him a little more comfortable and suggested he try to eat a jello cup for dinner. I watched it all from Milt’s side; watched him charm the women half to death, watched him turn the straightest of male doctors just a little bit gay for him just because he could.

This guy.

I felt better than I had in days, weeks, hell. Years.

This was how forever started for me. Sharing red jello with the devil, and loving every second of it.

 

_fin_


End file.
